Digital imprints take root: the pace of publishing via e-book imprints quickens.(News)

Traditional trade publishers have been testing the digital-first/digital-only publishing waters for more than two years now, and the pace is accelerating. This month alone, Penguin is reviving the Dutton Guilt Edged Mysteries line as a digital only imprint, Kensington has launched eKensington as an e-book only imprint, F+W Media is moving its Crimson Romance e-book imprint from a beta test to full launch coinciding with the rollout of its newest e-book subscription site, this one for romance books, while HarperCollins's Impulse imprint will double its output from one digital title per week to two this fall and will add William Morrow and Harper Voyager to the Impulse line, which began with Avon.

While the publishers see the digital imprints as a way to publish new authors as well as to bring back once popular titles that have gone out of print, they insisted that they are publishing titles in the digital imprints with the same energy as titles in traditional imprints. "This is not a junior imprint," said Lucia Macro, who manages Impulse at HC. "The same teams that work on print titles work on Impulse." That includes the rights department; Avon has sold print and digital eights for He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not, plus a second title by Impulse debut author Lena Diaz to Germany. Approximately 80% of Impulse's titles are …